Journal of Environmental Protection, 2013, 4, 1002-1010

http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jep.2013.49116 Published Online September 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jep)

Institutions and Intellectuals That Configure the Concept
of the Environment and Development in Latin America
and Its Global Impact
*

Fernando Estenssoro, Eduardo Dves

Advanced Studies Institute of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Email: fernando.estenssoro@usach.cl, eduardo.deves@usach.cl

Received J uly 1
st
, 2013; revised August 4
th
, 2013; accepted August 29
th
, 2013

Copyright 2013 Fernando Estenssoro, Eduardo Dves. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons At-
tribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is prop-
erly cited.
ABSTRACT
This paper is part of a research into the Latin American thinking on international affairs and a continuation of a line of
work on Latin American contributions to the environmental discussion installed in the global political agenda in the
early 70s. The premise was that Latin American contributions were initially made by professionals closely related to
ECLAC, UNEP and the Bariloche Foundation. These professionals and agencies understood how poverty and back-
wardness were endured by the majority of the regional and worlds population was one of the main causes of environ-
mental degradation; consequently, overcoming the environmental crisis meant that underdevelopment should be eradi-
cated without delay. This view of the environmental problems was synthesized in the combined concept of environment
and development, which was also understood in the region as eco development. Finally, the broad phenomenon they
wanted to describe using the terms environment and development was summarized in the concept of sustainable de-
velopment as defined in the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development report Our Common Future.

Keywords: Environment and Development; Environmental Crisis; Latin American Intellectuals; World Politics
1. Introduction
The hypothesis that the 70s and the first part of the fol-
lowing decade were key years in Latin America (LA) was
worked on in this article for building and later social-
izing environmental concerns from a perspective that
linked the environment protection issue with the un-
avoidable needs of the regions development. This proc-
ess was the work of a first group of Latin Americans re-
lated to the Economic Commission for Latin America
and the Caribbean ECLAC (CEPAL, as per its acronym
in Spanish), to the Latin American Office of the United
Nations Program for the Environment (UNEP, as per its
acronym in Spanish) and the Bariloche Foundation. Both
the persons and institutions stated were embedded, for
several years, in the worldwide discussion existing in
relation to topics pertaining to development and sub-
development. Therefore, they picked up the environ-
mental issue and related it to the subject of development,
seeking to educate and socialize in this perspective the
political, intellectual elite, and LA decision makers when
facing the environmental problem.
Moved in principle by the call of the United Nations
(UN) to hold the Conference on Human Environment in
Stockholm in J une 1972, they formed an intellectual
framework demonstrating and expressing their thoughts,
mainly, through the preparation and exposure of different
encounters, from regional interests and perspectives, but,
additionally with the clear purpose of influencing and
focusing the development policies of the regions gov-
ernments [1].
Based on what was contributed by center-periphery
theory and dependence on the 50s and 60s, they in-
cluded in their reflections the increasing transnationaliza-
tion and interdependence phenomenon of the world
economy along with the complex and nascent variable of
worldwide environmental crisis, affecting practically all
areas of social activities that was placed in the world
agenda by the UN in Stockholm in 1972.
*
This article is the result of research Fondecyt No 1110860: Towards a
mapping of the International Latin American Thinking of the Twenti-
eth Century: works, problems, schools and categories.
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Thus, with contribution of these intellectuals, a new
eidetic and conceptual corpus was formed that defined
the new challenge of caring and preserving the environ-
ment along with the most traditional, taking care of is-
sues pertaining to development and sub-development.
This merger of issues that initially emerged separately
and conflicting would be expressed in a compound con-
cept that was socialized as environment and development.
This compound concept that turned into the fighting
banner of the Latin American perspective and the world
undergoing development in general, was finally fully
adopted in the sustainable development concept, as was
defined by the World Commission on Environment and
Development (CMMD, as per its acronym in Spanish for
Comisin Mundial de Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo), in
its re-known 1987 report Our Common Future.
The main ideas of this corpus are given through the
speech of some of these intellectuals, representative of
the aforementioned centers.
2. Contribution of Intellectuals Related to
the Economic Commission for Latin
America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
Although it is true that the first time that the issue of the
environment and development were related from the
Third World perspective, or rather, in understanding that
the greatest variable that the worldwide environmental
crisis generated was poverty and under development and,
therefore, the most urgent activity to overcome this en-
vironmental crisis was precisely to overcome the under
development conditions in which most of humanity was
living, was the Founex Meeting in 1971, ECLAC imme-
diately picked up this interpretation and transformed it
into the strength idea that would focus, until today, the
perspective to understand the environmental issue in
these countries [2].
The first ideas that ECLAC reflected regarding the
matter were in 1971, upon petition of Maurice Strong
himself, Secretary General of the 1972 Stockholm Con-
ference, who requested that ECLAC determine the envi-
ronmental problems of the LA.-Caribbean Region that
would require a priority attention and to draft an action
plan to attack them [1]. In order to do so, ECLAC, sup-
ported by ILPES, called the Regional Latin American
Seminar on Human Environmental Problems event that
is considered as one of ECLACs initial approaches to
the environmental issue [3]. A study was presented for
discussion in this seminar called Human Environment
and Development in LA, where, just as in the Founex
Report, it was stated that the environmental crisis had
been generated by developed countries and although it
could be a worldwide phenomenon, the problem was that
the rich and industrialized countries only underscored
aspects derived from their own high industrialization and
opulence, however, in LA the contrary was happening,
given that the environmental crisis was due to its nature
of being an underdeveloped region, in addition to being a
bio-geographical zone different from the First World,
which is why a solution must be designed to the envi-
ronmental issue from its own perspective:
The concentration of the economic activity and growth
in urban centers has contributed to deteriorate the envi-
ronment surrounding mankind in highly industrialized
countries to such extent that their governments have been
forced to establish the need of adopting radical measures
() In Latin America bad environmental conditions
were mainly originated in their scarce economic devel-
opment level, accompanied by deficient income distribu-
tion and social structures that tend to make this situation
permanent. When the industrialization process was pro-
duced in the region, necessary to overcome the under
development status and starting to use modern technolo-
gies, new environmental problems were added to the
traditional ones, making the already deteriorated situation
in rural and urban environments more serious () Under
development modifies and conditions that way that envi-
ronmental problems are taken on in Latin America and
these, in turn, are added to other aspects that are charac-
teristic of under development. There is no other alterna-
tive than continuing to give top priority to development
plans and policies, but enriching them with new elements
provided by the study of environmental problems, al-
ready important in many countries and that will acquire
future increasing significance [4].
This line of thought continued immediately after the
conclusion of the Stockholm Conference in March 1973,
creating a joint unit ECLAC/UNEP in charge of coordi-
nating activities related to the environment and where the
analysis of environmental problem features in LA and
its relations with development would be privileged [5].
Thus, between October 21 and November 29, 1974 the
First Latin American Planning Course of Development
and the Environment was held in Buenos Aires with the
participation of 14 Argentinean grantees and 12 from 10
South American countries, in addition to 20 profes-
sors [6]. In addition, the ECLAC-UNEP Project was
coordinated between 1974-1976, with the objective of
drafting an inventory of regional environmental problems
that would focus the regions governments and agencies
[1].
2.1. Sunkel-Gligo: Development and
Environment Styles in Latin America
However, perhaps the ECLAC-UNEP Project that influ-
enced most of the socialization of this perspective to un-
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derstand the environmental issue was the so-called De-
velopment and Environment Styles in LA, which was
started mid-1978 and concluded mid-1980. Both Vicente
Snchez, then in charge of the UNEP Latin American
Office, as well as Enrique V. Iglesias, ECLACs Execu-
tive Secretary, were seeking with this project to impact in
the political-executive authorities of the region that
showed little knowledge regarding the environmental
value in development issues [7]. In order to do so, they
offered project management to Osvaldo Sunkel, at that
time living in England, under the conviction that their
prestige would allow permeating through this resistance
that was shown both by specialists in economy and de-
velopment issues as well as political and executive au-
thorities [7]. Of course, Sunkel conscious of the fact that
they did not have any greater specialization in the envi-
ronmental issue, established the condition that a team of
experts in the matter should be contracted. Given the
above, when he arrived to Chile and contacted Luciano
Tomassini, who was then Enrique Iglesias advisor at
ECLAC, he immediately introduced him to Nicolo Gligo,
agronomist and ecologist that during the Salvador Al-
lendes presidential administration (1970-73) had di-
rected the Chilean Institute of Natural Resources of Chile
(IREN its acronym in Spanish). Regarding the intellect-
tual contribution made by Gligo to Sunkels thinking he
recalls: I could discover with him what I consider the
key to understanding the field of study of ecology, the
notion of ecosystem, the comprehension that we are all
part of one single ecosystem and that there is a direct
relationship between whats going on in the society and
nature (in its widest sense). This was a very rich reflec-
tion as I realized not only that there is a nature, but also
that there is a transformed nature, a natural environment
and an artificial manmade environment and that every-
thing is interconnected. Similarly, the international eco-
nomic trends, either in the rural and urban development
have strong implications from the environmental stand-
point [8]. Thus, Gligo and Sunkel formed a highly com-
plementary team that became a key element for the pro-
jects success, among which main activities were holding
the inter-disciplinary seminar Development and Envi-
ronmental Styles in LA, held between November 19 and
23, 1979, in Santiago, Chile and that gathered more than
500 professionals and personalities of the region and,
additionally, allowed the new publication with the same
name in 1981, which became a classic work of the issue
in FTA [9]. In this endeavour they were certainly assisted
by a large number of experts with whom they teamed up
at the ECLAC. One of them was Gilberto Gallopin who,
according to Gligo, was a key contributor as an expert
systems analyst and ecologist who helped us to define
the environment as the mediation of the environment by
the society, not anymore as something related only to
natural resources as it was understood back then. It
opened the way for us to put a stress on the social and
political aspects of the environmental issues, along with
the natural side [10].
It is considered that this Project and the later publica-
tion of Estilos de desarrollo y Medio Ambiente en la AL
(Development and Environmental Styles in Latin Amer-
ica), was the critical boost to socialize the perspective
stated of the environmental issue in the region. E.g.,
Ignacy Sachs, questioned in 1983 regarding the need to
progress in sustainable development processes in LA,
stated that the starting point is already present, provided
through the seminars organized in 1979 by ECLAC and
other regional commissions of the United Nations in col-
laboration with UNEP, in terms of development styles
and alternative models on the use of resources [11].
Similarly, the Colombian Margarita Marino de Botero,
from the Institute of Natural Resources of Colombia
(INDERENA, Instituto de Recursos Naturales de Co-
lombia), underscored the importance of this project on
asserting that, in order to deal with this regions envi-
ronmental problem, the most important contribution
seems to be considering the development styles such as
the fundamental framework of the discussion regarding
the environment, economic and technological future and
social progress of LA [12].
The truth is that in the different articles published in
this work, it is made explicit how the environmental
variable was inserted in the ECLAC structuralist tradition,
initiated with the center-periphery and dependency the-
ory, making it evolve to the phenomena relative to the
transnationalization and economic interdependence that
Sunkel was already studying during the first half of the
70s, and that were modifying the international order in a
process that, in the following decades was going to be
made popular as globalization.
2.2. Ral Prebisch: The Environmental Crisis
Was Generated by the Irrational Capitalist
Development Model of the Center
Prebisch made explicit that it was capitalism and his
hegemonic development model, as well as the dominant
center-periphery dominant power relations, which had
caused the environmental crisis and, particularly, after
the end of the Second World War, the greatest response-
bility lied in the United States as the main world capital-
ism center:
It is possible to see this more clearly than before in the
capitalist development of the centers. The extraordinary
momentum of the last decades to recent times is not only
the result of an impressive technical progress but also
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from the irrational exploitation of natural resources, par-
ticularly energy resources that, in turn, has noticeably
influenced the technical focus. There has been, therefore,
a false element in the system functioning of very dra-
matic world consequences. In all of the aforementioned,
the hegemonic power of the centers in the periphery of
world economy has been of decisive importance, par-
ticularly that of the United States, the main dynamic
capitalist center [13].
Therefore, if the planets ecosystems were threatened
it was the result of capitalisms irrational development,
which had led to the depredation of non-renewable
natural resources, particularly those of energy resources
and the phenomena of contaminating air, rivers and seas,
as well as the deterioration of natural resources that, de-
spite their renewable nature, are not exempt from the
adverse effect of technical resources. These were very
flagrant phenomena, to which the possible and very
serious effects on climate of the growing emission of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere must be added [13].
In addition, all this environmental destruction had also
reached the periphery that on pursuing the arcane design
of developing in the image and likeness of the centers,
also reproduced its evils, since it seems evident that the
imitation of the consumption forms of the latter had to
bring with it the irresponsible use of natural resources.
However, despite this, it should not be forgotten that in
all cases in the periphery this destruction happens with
much less intensity than the one in the centers. Al-
though, on the other hand, the growing urban concentra-
tion occurring in the periphery shows very acute con-
tamination phenomena comparable to those of the cen-
ter [13].
On the other hand, Presbich stated that this environ-
mental problem, as such, expressed in LA and in the
Caribbean was not new, but that they came from way
back, only that now it had turned very serious, global and
complex. The complexity itself of the problem stated that
now the centers cannot become isolated with a sanitary
cord of the adverse events of the periphery. For the first
time they are referring to interdependence. Of course, it
is interdependence among unequal ones, but in any case
the adverse repercussion that happens in the periphery
from the lack of action of the centers will react sooner or
later over the centers themselves. Such is the current
complexity of the world [13].
2.3. Sunkel and Tomassini: The Environmental
Issue Will Become Strategic in the
Center-Periphery Relations
In the same manner, Osvaldo Sunkel and Luciano
Tomassini argued that the center-periphery relations had
become more complex after the turning point of the ex-
pansive cycle experienced by the industrialized econo-
mies between the end of the Second World War and the
70s. Pivotal point exacerbated during this decade by the
oil crisis that led central economies to a growing transna-
tionalization process of their companies seeking costs,
factors of production and hand labor that are each time
cheaper, but also less saturated and less destroyed sys-
tems by the then called negative externalities of the eco-
nomic production process, such as the contamination of
its industrial processes. Therefore, LA had to take on this
new situation that characterized international relations
and, among other measures, understand that their eco-
systems were transformed into an economic resource that
could be abusively treated by the developed countries
(e.g. the case of the forestry mass in reference to the
natural source of CO
2
when facing the climate change
phenomenon). In this respect, the environmental issue
not only has to do with the contamination and resource
degradation issues, but that it also became a strategic
aspect of the North-South relations, in the growing
transnational and interdependent North-South relations,
in a growing transnational and interdependent world that
was emerging [14].
2.4. Enrique V. Iglesias: The Challenge of the
Region Is to Balance Intensive Exploitation
of Its Natural Resources with the Care of the
Environment
In turn, Iglesias underscored the key contribution that
ECLAC performed to teach the idea that development
and the environment go hand in hand, so that one is the
indispensable support of the other and, thus, it becomes
a fundamental idea within the global environmental de-
bate. Certainly, it was recognized that the environmental
issue left clear that we were living in a world that was
more interdependent, but the contribution was the one
that underscored that it dealt with a marked interdepend-
ence due to a profound lack of equality, where a third of
humanity, the developed or the First World, h ad condi-
tions that allowed a dignified life and two thirds lacked
these conditions. In this respect, ECLAC contributed to
the awareness of the Third World countries in general
and to Latin Americans in particular, which in their de-
velopment process reproduced environmental problems
similar to the ones caused by the First World, but that
now, under the sign of the environmental crisis, had to
conciliate the development effort and the preservation
of the environment [15]. This is an issue that had to be
present in this part of the world, rich in natural resources
and depending on them for their economic growth.
Without a doubt, the exploitation of nature was an un-
avoidable process of progress and human development,
but, similarly, ecological care by means of rational ex-
ploitation, seemed key for the present and future interests
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of these countries.
In extract, for Iglesias, LA could not could not dis-
pense from the extensive exploitation of its resources, in
order to progress in an accelerated manner to overcoming
the pressing problems of under development, but had to
do so in an environmentally sustainable manner:
The countries of the region must be the only way of
satisfying the progress needs and hopes of societies, is
through an intensive and rational exploitation of natural
resources () But they also know as well that in this
process, both science as well as experience of others are
valuable instruments in order to avoid, if possible, that
unavoidable errors turn into unnecessary detriment for
present and future generations. In the combination of
both purposesintensive use of nature with efforts to
minimize ecological effects on the environmentlies on
the conciliation between the objectives of development
and the preservation of the environment. Both together
will contribute to the quality of life of todays and to-
morrows Latin American man [15].
3. The Bariloche Foundation: Overcoming
the Environmental Crisis Does Not Go
through Ending Growth and
Development, but Rather to Reconsider It
Socially
From the theoreticalpolitical view the two great global
models that were confronted in the decade of the 70s
around the environmental problem were, on the one hand,
the outlook of developed countries summarized in the
Club of Rome Report, Los Lmites del Crecimiento
(Growth Limits) [16], and the outlook of countries un-
dergoing development expressed in the Bariloche Group
Report or Bariloche Foundation [17], Catstrofe o
Nueva Sociedad (Catastrophe or New Society?) formed
by LA specialists tied to development topics and the
North-South relations [18].
This process of responding to the environmental crisis
by means of generating an LA alternative and own model
was started in 1970 due to the invitation that the Club of
Rome along with the Institute of Technological Research
of Rio de J aneiro, joined a group of scientists to discuss
the central thesis that they have been working on, for the
Club of Rome, Dr. Dennis Meadows and his team of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and that
will be finally known as The Limits to Growth. In this
meeting, that was held in Rio de J aneiro, the attending
Latin Americans questioned the basic assumptions with
which Meadows and its team had built its model, and,
due to this, they entrusted the Bariloche Foundation to
build its own model that picked up this critical approach.
Thus, a first group was constituted formed by Carlos A.
Mallmann, Jorge Sbato, Enrique Oteiza, Amilcar Her-
rera, Helio J aguaribe and Osvaldo Sunkel, who deliv-
ered, at the end of 1971, a first document with the hy-
pothesis and variables to contest Meadows and its team.
Afterwards, Amlcar Herrera was appointed as project
head, who formed a work team with another 17 scientists
who drafted the final version of the report [18]. This re-
port was first published in 1976 in the journal Nueva
Sociedad, under the title Modelo mundial latinoameri-
cano (Latin American World Model) also known as the
Bariloche Model [23]. The answer of the Bariloche
Group, stated that the main problem in the world was not
the physical limits of the planet that impeded an unde-
fined growth, as well as the neo-Malthusian fears, as was
proposed in the Roma Club report, but rather, the main
problem was of a social political nature and lied in the
unequal distribution of power and wealth in the world.
Therefore, the solution consisted on making profound
changes in the social dominant organization:
The ideal society project [that the Bariloche Model
asserts] is born as a response to the opinion current, that
particularly in developed countries assert that the funda-
mental problem faced by current humanity is the limit
imposed by the physical environment. As is well-known,
according to this conception, the exponential increase of
consumption and the population will fatally finish ex-
hausting the planets natural resources, probably in the
coming future. In addition, and despite the fact that natu-
ral resources are not exhausted in the foreseeable future,
the growing contamination of the Environment will pro-
duce the collapse of the ecosystem on the short-term. The
final result will always be the same: catastrophic deten-
tion of growth with the massive death of the population
and the decreasing general life conditions at the pre-in-
dustrial levels () The attitude of the authors of this
model is radically different: it sustains that the most im-
portant problems facing the modern world are not physi-
cal but rather social-political, and are based on the un-
equal distribution of power, both internationally as well
as within countries, throughout the world [19].
Certainly, the Bariloche Model rejected the arguments-
considering them deterministic-, of the growing limits,
which rejected the possibility of unlimited economic
growth and that, following the development model of
industrialized countries, all people living in the world
would reach a level of development and quality of life
similar to the one that characterized the First World
countries. The deterioration of the physical media for
Latin Americans was not an unavoidable consequence
of human progress, but the result of a social organization
founded on values, mostly destructive, and in that re-
spect, the human fate did not depend on a last instance,
on physical insurmountable barriers, but on social and
political factors that it competes for mankind to modify
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[20]. In that respect, the catastrophic perspective of the
Club of Rome was contested by the Bariloche Group
from a regulatory perspective, setting forth rather a goal,
i.e. a desirable future, that is defined and that what must
be done to reach this desirable future, starting from to-
days situations and conditions [21].
4. The United Nations Environment
Program (UNEP)
The United Nations General Assembly established the
UNEP on 15 December 1972, following the resolutions
of the Stockholm Conference. The UNEPs Governing
Council is made up of 58 member states with headquar-
ters in Nairobi, Kenya [22]. This program would prove
vital for Third World countries in their efforts to estab-
lish an indissoluble link between the Environment and
Development. What is very interesting in this connection
is that Vicente Sanchez, former plenipotentiary ambas-
sador of Chile to the 1972 Stockholm Conference was
one of the main architects of this endeavor on UNEPs
side.
Sanchez said he continued to work on environmental
issues immediately after the Stockholm Conference in his
role as international staff member of the Chilean Mission
to Geneva. The first meeting of the UNEPs Governing
Council was held on J une 1973. Sanchez was elected one
of the two vice chairs of the UNEP in this meeting, be-
sides leading the committee responsible for discussing
the management of the US$ 100 Million UNEP Fund.
The urgency of establishing an Executive Secretariat to
start working as soon as possible was also discussed
during this first meeting. The UNEP opened its brand-
new offices in Nairobi on 3 October 1973, with the pres-
ence of its chief officers, the Canadian born Execu-
tive-Director Maurice Strong, the Deputy Director Mo-
stafa Tolba from Egypt, and UNEPs Fund Director Paul
Berthoud from Switzerland. There was also a line of me-
dium-ranking officers present at the opening, among
which Vicente Sanchez who was in charge of the
UNEPs Division of Economic and Social Programs
PNUMA [7].
This division continued driving the link of the envi-
ronment and development concepts that started two years
ago at FOUNEX; an ideal Sanchez had embraced and
vigorously advocated during the 1972 Stockholm Con-
ference [7].
Later on, the Regional Office for Latin America and
the Caribbean of the United Nations Environment Pro-
gram was established in 1975, with Mr. Vicente Sanchez
as its first Director, and a head office in Ciudad de Mex-
ico. Sanchez played a crucial role there as articulator and
witness to all initiatives focused on disseminating this
view now summarized as environment and development
in Latin America.
The Concept of Eco-Development as
Background to the Concept of Sustainable
Development
In this regard, it is important to clarify that in the 70s and
early 80s the concept of Sustainable Development had
not yet been defined, explained and widely disseminated
as it was in the World Commission on Environment and
Development (WCED) famous 1987 report Our Com-
mon Future [24]. Eco-development, the term most
commonly used back then, referred to the need to ally the
care for the environment with development requirements
as identified by the representatives of developing coun-
tries.
In other words, in the early years, the concept of eco-
development associated in one single term the idea that
the development and care of the environment would go
hand in hand, and that they were not clashing words at all.
The concept was also used to oppose to the merely
economistic approach to development (associating de-
velopment to economic growth only), the mechanical
imitation of the First-World pattern of economic growth,
and also to support the idea that developing countries
should find their own path to development. Maurice
Strong was the first to use the concept of eco-develop-
ment in this context when speaking at the first meeting
of the UNEPs Governing Council in Geneva in J une
1973, encouraged by the Founex Report, to depict the
idea that development and the environment are not in
conflict with each other, yet they constitute two different
aspects of the same concept. What is really at stake is the
rational management of resources with the purpose of
improving mankinds global habitat and ensuring a better
quality of life for all human beings. Again, this concept
of development is now expanding and becoming more
accurate [25]. But Ignacy Sachs has been the author who
intellectually elaborated on this concept to try and regain
the spirit of the Founex Report, profoundly discussing
this concept in his paper Environment and Styles of De-
velopment [26], and subsequently in the book Stra-
tgies de lco dveloppement (1980), and in many
other articles in which he defined eco-development as a
socially desirable, economically viable, and ecologically
prudent development [27].
Whats interesting about this concept, in this construc-
tion, is that it was immediately adopted by such out-
standing personalities of the environmental discussion of
those years as Vicente Snchez, Hctor Sejenovich,
J aime Hurtubia, Francisco Szekely, and Enrique Iglesias,
among others, who worked together back then at the
UNEP and the ECLAC.
For instance, Snchez and Sejenovich published in
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1978 the article: Ecodesarrollo: Una estrategia para el
desarrollo social y econmico compatible con la con-
servacin ambiental; nine years before the Our Com-
mon Future Report which conceptualized the concept of
sustainable development was published they wrote:
We consider eco-development as a model of economic
development endorsing the use of resources to satisfy the
needs of the current and future generations of population,
by maximizing functional efficiency of eco-systems in
the long run, employing technologies suited to that end,
and by fully deploying the human potential within an
institutional arrangement that allows people to participate
in the fundamental decisions [28].
Both authors are also editors of the book Antologa en
torno al ecodesarrollo (Anthology Surrounding Eco-
Development) published in 1983. The book describes
again how, during the preparation of the 1972 Stockholm
Conference on Human Environment and at the actual
conference, the environmental issues arose as a global
concern focusing in the relationship between the quality
of the environment and development processes; devel-
oping countries, especially those of Latin America
stressed from the very beginning of the conference on the
relevance of achieving a comprehensive view of the en-
vironmental and development topics, discussing the need
for growth patterns and economic development suitable
to the environment and the search for development pat-
terns involving environmentally friendly alternative
technological and social strategies for the use and con-
sumption of natural resources... [29].
Likewise, we should mention that the UNEP financed
the publication in 1983 of the Colombian book Ecode-
sarrollo, el pensamiento del decenio (Eco development,
the thought of the past decade), in which Enrique Iglesias
wrote the article: The Past, Present, and Future of Eco-
Development stating that contrary to the trend to con-
sider the ecologic issue negatively, as a cost that must be
absorbed, it becomes clear today that there are forms of
economic development that benefit openly from a suit-
able management of the environment and in this respect,
from ECLAC they have been adamant in saying to gov-
ernments of the Region that managing the environment is
important not only for ecological preservation purposes,
but also as a positive economic factor adding to many
others [30].
5. The World Commission on Environment
and Development (WCED) and the
Concept of Sustainable Development
As a matter of fact, most of the viewpoints proposed at
an earlier stage under this concept of eco-development
were extensively recovered in the definition of the con-
cept of sustainable development as defined in the 1987
WCED Report Our Common Future.
The WCED was formally established on 19 December
1983 by the UN General Assembly at its 38
th
session as a
special commission that would put forward long term
environmental strategies for a sustainable development,
even if it adopted its current name of World Commission
on Environment and Development in 1984. In order to
support the work of the Commission the World Research
Institute (WRI) invited in May 1984 to an international
gathering to be held in Washington, D.C. under the
theme The Global Possible: Resources, Development
and New Century. The purpose of this conference was
to have a group of 75 world leaders of science, govern-
ments, the industry and the civil society organizations
respond to a question they considered essential: Can the
world today reverse the current environmental degrada-
tion and promote a better quality of life for all at the
same time, achieving significant improvements of living
standards of the destitute? [31].
Certainly, Maurice Strong and Gro Harlem Brundtland
were among the guests, but also was Vicente Snchez,
now in his capacity as Director of the Mexican Instituto
de Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo del Colegio de Mxico
(Institute of the Environment and Development of the
Mexican School) (Ibd.). In this meeting Ms. Brundtland
asked Mr. Snchez to take up the Executive Secretariat
of the WCED [7].
So, once more Mr. Snchez became a witness and a
privileged player in the North-South discussion on how
to deal with the environmental issues. It took an intense
period of discussions and negotiations in the Commission
that stretched for almost 4 years, to reach a common po-
sition between developed and developing countries on
how to comprehend and consequently, solve the envi-
ronmental crisis. The final consensual formula is synthe-
sized in the famous concept of Sustainable Development
discussed extensively in the Commissions report:
Sustainable development is development that meets
the needs of the present without compromising the ability
of future generations to meet their own needs.
It contains within it two key concepts:
the concept of needs, in particular, the essential
needs of the worlds poor, to which overriding priority
should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by
the state of technology and social organization on the
environments ability to meet present and future needs.
()At a minimum, sustainable development must not
endanger the natural systems that support life on Earth:
the atmosphere, the waters, the soils, and the living be-
ings... [24].
Finally, in 1987 the General Assembly at its Plenary
Session of December 11 commended the WCEDs work
and endorsed the concept of sustainable development as
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Institutions and Intellectuals That Configure the Concept of the
Environment and Development in Latin America and Its Global Impact
1009
defined in the Report. The General Assembly also borne
in mind that, on the nature of issues of environmental
degradation and measures to redress it, the worlds gov-
ernments shared the criteria that underdevelopment was
one of the major issues since ... generalized poverty is
usually one of the major causes of environmental degra-
dation, the eradication of poverty and equal access of all
individuals to resources are essential to achieving sus-
tainable improvements of the environment [32].
As a result, 19 years after the UN summoning of the
Conference on Human Environment, the international
community represented at the UN General Assembly was
able to reach an agreement to move forward on the reso-
lution to environmental issues by linking definitively the
concepts of Environment and Development in one single
indivisible phenomenon summarized in the formula of
Sustainable Development. In other words, the environ-
ment and development, the central outlook developed by
Latin American intellectuals to be able to comprehend
the global environmental crisis had been formally ac-
cepted by the United Nations. This would subsequently
open the path for the General Assembly resolution at its
Plenary Session on 22 December 1989 inviting to a new
summit to be held in Rio de J aneiro, Brazil in 1992. This
time the name would be United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development calling to re-launching
the environment theme as one of the most relevant topics
of the worlds political agenda [33].
6. Conclusions
1) We got conclusion by asserting that in Latin America
the link between development and environment had been
embraced at a very early stage essentially thanks to the
activity of intellectuals associated with the ECLAC, the
UNEP and the Bariloche Foundation as a powerful idea
that would guide its approach to the topic of the envi-
ronment protection embedded in the global public agenda
on the occasion of the celebration of the 1972 Stockholm
Conference on Human Environment;
2) Latin America played a relevant role in shaping this
idea which emerged from the discussions held in 1971 at
the Swiss locality of Founex and gained momentum in
the following years to become hegemonic in the global
environmental discourse, and in the materialization and
enrichment of this complex concept of environment and
development;
3) In this connection, the existence of the ECLAC with
all the contribution made to the global thinking, with the
dependency and underdevelopment theories and its
role linking a significant number of intellectuals and
professionals from the region and the world to reflect on
the problems of world policy from the regional perspec-
tive made it easier for Latin American authors to link
concepts on environment and development at a very early
stage in the context of ECLACs eidetic trajectory, im-
printing a Latin American hallmark into this concept.
4) This process has been expanded and supported
resolutely from the very beginning by the UNEP, rein-
forced by the installation of the UNEPs regional office
in Ciudad de Mexico and close collaboration with the
ECLAC. Also the activity deployed by Bariloche Foun-
dation has been important, whose members interacted
either with the ECLAC or the UNEP. According to Mar-
garita Marino de Botero, the seminar organized by these
agencies in 1979 on styles of development and environ-
ment, and the response to the thesis on Limits to Growth
by the Bariloche Foundation who proposed growth con-
ditions in agreement with the available resources and
technologies were crucial to consider styles of devel-
opment as the fundamental framework of discussion on
the environment, the economic and technological future
and social advancement in Latin America [12].
5) Scholar minds and wills were interconnected in
Latin America through the intellectual networking of
members of these agencies acting in the international
policy arena, and reacting against an approach to envi-
ronmental issues by developed countries they considered
narrow, unfair and partial. The final outcome had been
the making of a complete regional eidetic body of thought
that enhanced the world discussion on the environment.
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